


Zoo

by Shayvaalski



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Guns, Implied Relationships, M/M, Minor Violence, Tigers, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, seb moran: minder of highly sensitive people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-05
Updated: 2012-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-03 02:04:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They haven’t been together long when Jim takes Seb to see the tigers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zoo

**Author's Note:**

> For Jessie. This was one of the first fics I wrote for Sherlock. I don't know why it took me so long to post it. This sort of goes along with Saving Moriarty, though it's set earlier. Suggestions for a better title welcome.

They haven’t been together long when Jim takes Seb to see the tigers.

It’s when they’re living in that first shitty little apartment, before it burns down to the foundations and neither of them will admit to striking the match or leaving on the stove. There are still two beds, crammed into one small bedroom, so that Sebastian’s cot is actually at the foot of Jim’s queensize, which is both an indignity and deeply reassuring. Already he is falling asleep to the low muttering hiss of Jim’s inability to settle down; already he is making breakfast in the mornings, half-dressed and barefoot, timing it to the moment Jim appears, rumpled and yawning and unreadable.

Sometimes, his boss brushes by him gently, half-intimately, hands cool and almost clinical against his face or shoulder, and Seb is beginning to be prepared for the blow that often follows. He would rather, he thinks, be struck by Moriarty than touched by anybody else.

 

 

The gun goes off next to his ear and Seb is upright and grabbing for his weapon, back in Afghanistan with landmines just missing him, back in the jungle waiting for the tiger. He is rolling off the cot and into a crouch, fumbling for the trigger, and Jim is laughing. Sebastian straightens, clicks the safety back on, watches the line of Jim’s throat and jaw as he gains control of his hilarity.

“Fucken hell, boss,” says Seb, noting with exasperation and a slight shivering thrill of fear the bullet hole in the far wall. “Can you, you know,  _not?”_

Jim’s punch comes weighted with the butt of a handgun, and Sebastian doesn’t dodge. Dodging, he’s learned, is not a question of avoiding the blow, but simply putting off when it will come. He relaxes into the punch, hopes the gun is well-made enough to not go off with the force of being used so roughly. Guns, he has discovered in the two months since they moved in, are not tools to Jim, but playthings, or props, or the inelegant means to an inevitable end. It does not go off, but he hears the hammer cock, and braces for a second blow.

Seb would already die for Jim, but he doesn’t want it to be tonight.

The blow doesn’t come. The other man has already forgotten his anger, and is grinning like a child, eyes wide and all pupil, drinking in the night like water.

“Get up,” he says, and he is almost wriggling with glee. “I got you a present. Now get dressed. We’re going out.”

“What should I wear, boss?” Not where, not when, certainly not why; not, it’s two am and you kept me up until eleven lying on a dirty rooftop with a rifle just so you could make a threat, never any question but  _what do you want me to do_. This is Sebastian’s life. This is his simplicity.

“Oh, anything practical, Sebby.” And Jim flicks his wrist in the way Seb is starting to be able to read as impatience touched with mania. “So long as you’re quick.” Jim is wearing Westwood, but Jim is always wearing Westwood, so Seb puts on black jeans and a gray shirt, pulling a jumper on as an afterthought. London isn’t quite out of summer just yet, but it’s getting cool at night. He’s just lacing up his army-issue boots when Jim slips a blindfold over his eyes, fingers light against the back of Seb’s neck as he ties it.

Sebastian is not afraid. If Jim wants to kill him, he will, and there’s no use being scared. Jim’s hand against his elbow brings him to his feet, down the stairs, out the door, and into the street. Seb’s ears are nearly as good as his eyes, and the street is deserted of anyone but them. Next to him his boss is breathing in, a shallow half-gasp, the one that goes along anything he’s particularly enjoying. The keys are dangling loosely in his hands, knocking against one slim leg, and he breathes out, and laughs.

Jim drives. In a way Sebastian is grateful to be blinded, because it means he doesn’t have to see the way Moriarty skids up onto the sidewalks, skews across all available lanes. This late he’s in minimal danger, but there’s a reason Seb drives anywhere they need to go, or calls a taxi when he thinks Jim will need more active containment than a seatbelt can offer.

Jim keeps two fingers on Seb’s knee the whole way, a sort of idle ownership, asserting who’s in charge. Jim  _touches_  people, pushes up against them, so that sometimes in the evening on the couch, Seb will find his hand tangled in his employer’s hair without quite knowing how it happened, while Jim watches the news on mute and mutters to himself. He doesn’t mind. Seb, too, is man of animal physicality, of the understanding between two bodies and the ways in which they move.

He says nothing until the car stops, and Jim flings the door open with a flourish that speaks of nerves on fire and flush with triumph in his own cleverness. And even then, he only asks, “My gun, boss?” Seb goes nowhere without a weapon, remembering, even when his employer seems to forget, that his first job is to be protection, the drawn blade that keeps Moriarty safe.

“Ask and you shall receive, Sebby.” His army revolver is in his hand, and then Jim’s shoulder, almost vibrating with intensity, is pressed against his, urging Sebastian forward. They walk, almost arm in arm, around corners and down ramps, through a place that Seb cannot quite identify. Something about the low rustles and coughs and grunts, the warm humidity of the air, reminds Seb of the way he felt in India.

And then he smells the tigers.

He goes still all over, and Jim makes a noise halfway between a hum and a groan as he feels Seb’s body stiffen, just a little. His thumb strokes the inside of Sebastian’s arm, then slides up, over his neck and jawline, and slips the blindfold off. Seb keeps his eyes closed for the space of two heartbeats, or three, breathing in, and when he opens them there are tigers moving in the darkness just beyond, all sinew and muscle and claws dragging down his chest.

“Well, Seb?” Jim’s fingers curl, possessive, against the small of his back; Sebastian catches his wrist and grips it hard enough to bruise. He is in the drain, lying on his belly in the Indian mud; he is waiting for the tiger to spring.


End file.
